Oh, Travels..

Since deciding to sleep in this morning and skip the sure-thing bus I have:

- Choked down a Turkish coffee I couldn't refuse with a Macedonian woman. The taste was quashed by the sugar-covered pink jelly sweet, two granola bars offered and the handful of sucking candies dropped into my bag despite my protest
- Drank a nice tea with honey and lemon alone with her travel agent son in the next town who first mocked my plan and then ended up suggesting basically the exact same one
- Plan immediately fell apart when the bus had left an hour before the time posted
- Declined a lady of the night (at noon) offered by her girlfriend(/pimp?) communicated by a sideways nod at her and then rubbing both index fingers together horizontally
- Bought a pizza bun for my cab driver (actually two once I broke mine open to find unidentified meat). This must have prompted him to try and bribe the Albanian border guard with a hundo ($2.5 CAD) so he could drop me at the first town 3km in, instead of right at the border. Then he asked for nearly triple the original price but I dumped all the denar I had in his hand (10% tip), claiming I had no Euro and he smiled and didn't hold it against me
- Had a man buy me what I thought was a tea that turned out to be a sweet cider (made especially sweet by the whole sugar packed I'd already added) and then he rhymed off his English words; door, window, table, car, bus!
- A mini bus driver with no English shared his favourite hip hop with me, French, English and even Albanian. Then when he finally understood my end destination flagged down another mini bus (while on the road!) and transferred me without payment for I had no Lek yet
- Stopped at a random roadside police check but didn't have to exit the van
- Dumped at intersection, still no lek, excused from fare. Told by next driver there is no direct bus to my destination. As he puts my bag in his storage a bus clearly emblazoned with my destination pulls up. Me and the kid stuff my bag into its trunk and dive into the door of the moving vehicle as it pulls away. Euro exchanged for Lek, $3 CAD/35km
- Caffeine crash on final packed mini bus (my normal consumption is a cola once every couple months)
- Arrived!